The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

SPINSTERHOOD AND CELIBACY
therefore divorcing sex entirely from the context of loving
relationships, did not look at all suited to what they saw as the
interests of women:
I do not think that to make our morality on a plane with
men’s would improve our position, or that anything but a
lasting tie would satisfy a woman. When she marries she
gives so much more than a man that she must have a hold
on him…. As for being merely the instrument of pleasure, a
woman’s desire is, in general, no mean second to a man’s. 31
‘Cailin Dhu’, the writer of the above letter, in fact believed that
women were naturally monogamous whilst men were
polygamous. The very practical reasons lying behind women’s
need for lasting ties, such as the fact that they bore children and
were not in a position to earn a reasonable living, would suggest
that women’s ‘monogamy’ was socially rather than naturally
constructed.
One correspondent, with great foresight, attributed the
propounding of a ‘new morality’ to the fact that men feared
that when women got the vote, their sex freedom under the
double standard might come to an end. The solution was to
encourage women to something called sex freedom, however
illusory, so that the single standard that came into being would
be that which men wanted and not the alarming vision being
propounded by most feminists:
It is noteworthy how anxious men are to safeguard their
incontinence in the coming age of the Freewoman. They are
expecting trouble, as your columns show, and by paying
heed to them, Freewoman will be leaving the frying-pan for
the fire. 32
She was quite right. There was no question of an equal standard
of sexual morality in a society in which the sexes were not
equal. When it looked as if the feminists might carry out their
threat to enforce chastity on men, a new code of sexual morality
developed which ensured that men retained the advantage. Some
feminists suggested that ‘sex freedom’ gave man more advantges
even than they had enjoyed under the double standard. There is
no doubt that in any system of free enterprise, including a sexual
one, those with the greatest material advantages benefit most
from the system and often at the expense of those who are not
so advantaged. But in 1911, though they did not know it, the
celibates were swimming against the tide.
99